In Spite of Everything

I use this blog as a diary.  A place to work through my thoughts - which can oftentimes be quite scattered and need to be corralled.  A way to sort through the emotions of a situation to discover what I actually think about something.

This summer has been...challenging.  In addition to the general stress of living and trying to keep my business running, there is the on-going struggle with adverse drug effects.  Then nearly four weeks of smoke pall.  I'm allergic to smoke and was aware that I was struggling with that, but not how much until I left for a couple of weeks and my body was able to breathe again without also inhaling what is, for me, a fairly significant allergen.

The drug I'm on has a list of adverse effect and I am having a lot of them, the most annoying one the sinus drainage, the second most annoying one (the two flip-flop on the list daily, sometimes hourly) is the feeling of being too tired to do much of anything.

I told a friend last night that once again I am in the position of trading speed for longevity.  Because the drug is working to keep the cancer under control.

Over the past few evenings I have been reading some of my posts from 2013 and into 2014.  When the hope and optimism was high.  I was in remission from the cancer, didn't need any drugs beyond the small amount of blood pressure medication I was on.

Until the wheels fell off late 2013 and in June of 2014 I was informed I was on the list to become a member of the 'zipper' club.

It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster as I re-lived those months.  And those emotions.   The high of being in remission.  The low of facing major surgery.

Well, I made it through all that and once again thought it would be smooth sailing.

And here I am.  Still.  So many aren't.  Because during that time period several people I know lost their battles with cancer.  But here I am.  Benefiting from modern day science/research, taking what my oncologist called a 'miracle' drug.  A drug that targets just the diseased cells and leaves the healthy ones alone.  I only have to deal with a list of annoying adverse effects.  A trade off I am (sort of) willing to deal with.  Because what is my choice?  To stop taking the drug and let the cancer have it's way with my body.  And I'm not ready to let that happen, yet.

So in spite of everything - the stress, the big projects (when will I learn?), the tired, the constant sinus drainage (and all the other adverse effects which are merely annoying), I managed to keep weaving.

Yes, I had to work hard to make myself go to the loom.  Yes, I was less productive than I would have liked to be.  But I did it.  And I have a respectable amount of textiles woven, some of them ready to be tagged/priced and put into inventory.

The above photo isn't all that I've done this summer and into September.  There are shawls as well, and tea towels, and table runners.

I will be going into the craft fair season with a reasonable amount of inventory.  The conference is coming together.  The Book is being worked on.

And I keep going.  In spite of everything...

Value/Worth

One skein of Corriedale, commercially dyed, carded on a drum carder to make this blend, hand spun and plied.  

What is it worth?   How much do I value the time and expense of making it?

The question of worth versus value is tricky.  It is a question that confronts me all the time - in terms of my hand woven textiles, my teaching and writing.

Some things are easy.  The customer makes an offer - X number of dollars for Y services or products.  All I have to do at that point is figure out if it is worth it to me to provide the service or product for that amount of money.

Other times I have to come up with the figure of what I think I am worth and see if there are any takers.

It becomes especially hard when people's expectations are vastly different from mine.  

I am wrestling with this very thing right now in terms of The Book.  I have already spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars learning this craft - with the workshops I've paid to attend, the samples I've woven, the failures that have taken up time and money simply to be a Learning Experience.

There are the services I will be paying others to do - from the editing to the other creative people who will contribute to the manuscript.  In the end, how will I decide what to charge?  Since it is going to be a book, there is hope that sufficient copies will be sold to add up to covering the out of pocket expenses of producing it (electricity to power the computer, printer ink to print out hard copies to edit - because I'm old school enough that I edit 'best' with a hard copy - the yarn for the woven samples, etc., etc., etc. - the stuff purchasers never even know that go into such an endeavour) not to mention the hours I've already spent and the hundreds of hours more that will go into the writing, designing of the learning examples, the editing (and editing and editing and editing).

There was a conference I attended where a participant was at the registration desk complaining bitterly about the $10 hand out fee she paid for the seminar she had just taken.  The hand out consisted of two sheets of paper, single spaced, both sides, so four densely packed pages of information.  Information that the instructor had spent years researching (I knew the instructor), and compiled as notes for the seminar she was presenting.

All the participant saw was 50 cents worth of paper, not the thousands of hours of research that had gone into the topic and the distillation of the information into hand outs she could take home and reference (there was a bibliography included).

To the participant, she was being 'ripped off' (her words).  She did not see anything beyond the value of the paper she had been given.  To her, the four pages of information had zero value.

So, how do I come up with a price for things like my teaching, writing, weaving?  I don't know.  There is no tried and true formula.  All I can do is come up with a price I think is fair and hope sufficient other people agree - and purchase.  Because even if you think a price is 'fair', it may still be out of your budget.  I am all too aware of limited budgets...sometimes sacrifices have to be made - either giving up something else, or giving up the thing you want.

Everyone has to figure out for themselves if a service or product is worth the price being asked and how much they value it.  

Definitive Answers

New weavers want definitive answers.  Unfortunately, usually the correct answer is...it depends.

Making cloth is not a straight forward linear process.  The factors that go into making suitable cloth for the intended purpose are varied and interdependent on each other.

For example, drape is dependent upon the fibre choice, how it has been prepared and spun (degree of twist), density and weave structure.

Wet finishing will depend again upon the fibre choice and materials since wool and linen (as an example) are wet finished differently.

The appearance of the cloth will depend upon the colour/texture of the yarns and the weave structure.

And so on.

One of the challenges with writing a book about weaving is that it is extremely difficult to present the information in a linear fashion.  This gets confusing and frustrating to people who think linearly.  But so far I have not found any way in which to logically present this information that will make sense to everyone.  

Therefore I know some people will be disappointed in my book because the material is going to jump around, back and forth, when they will want a straight line.

Unfortunately, no matter how I twist and turn my thoughts, no matter how logical I try to be, the above factors have to be weighed each against each other.  And that is a kind of messy organic blob, not a nice straight line narrative.

On the other hand, that is part of what makes weaving exciting for me and why I still learn something new all the time.  So many factors - so many ways to combine them.

Sample, Sample, Sample

For many years I have been wanting to explore a particular aspect of weaving and something always seemed to get in the way.  

Now I have all the materials I could want in order to explore this technique.  Since we are hoping to publish our results I won't give details except to say that the initial sampling will consist of nine 3 meter long warps, three or four samples each, so a minimum of 27 up to 36 samples in total.

What will these samples be after weaving?   Knowledge.  They will be a repository of knowledge and experience.  In other words, priceless.